Chris Lear > Quotes

“In many ways, a race is analogous to life itself. Once it is over, it can not be re-created. All that is left are inpressions in the heart, and in the mind.”
― Chris Lear, Running with the Buffaloes: A Season Inside with Mark Wetmore, Adam Goucher, and the University of Colorado Men's Cross-Country Team

“In a sport that demands compulsion, sometimes the hardest task is having the confidence to rest.”
― Chris Lear, Running with the Buffaloes: A Season Inside with Mark Wetmore, Adam Goucher, and the University of Colorado Men's Cross-Country Team

“Goucher *never* eats lunch. If he is hungry, he will have a granola bar or another light snack. The guys, especially Reese, kid him that he does not eat enough. He used to eat more. Standing 5'9" to 5'10", he weighs in at just under 140 pounds. At the Olympic Trials in Atlanta in 1996, he weighed 145. After the 5000-meter final, where he finished a disappointing fourteenth, Wetmore told him he was fat. Goucher was livid. When he calmed down he realized Wetmore was right, and he made a conscious effort to lose any excess weight since then. He feels the difference. "My chest was bigger, my arms were bigger. Losing the five pounds has helped me thin out, and it's cut me more. It's made a big difference.”
― Chris Lear, Running with the Buffaloes: A Season Inside with Mark Wetmore, Adam Goucher, and the University of Colorado Men's Cross-Country Team

“The right stuff' on this level," he says, "is some combination of these four qualities: talent, durability, determination, and courage.”
― Chris Lear, Running with the Buffaloes: A Season Inside with Mark Wetmore, Adam Goucher, and the University of Colorado Men's Cross-Country Team

“I know that these are incredible people with the incredible and audacious agenda to discover their own talents. This team knows what it is to be invested in a plan, to be dedicated to a system that simultaneously scares the hell out of you and makes you so excited you can barely hold it in.”
― Chris Lear, Running with the Buffaloes: A Season Inside with Mark Wetmore, Adam Goucher, and the University of Colorado Men's Cross-Country Team

“Bat asks Goucher if his leg is good, and Goucher shrugs. "All right." "Good or all right?" "All right enough." Batliner has been through the ringer enough, so he gives Goucher some advice he hopes Goucher will heed, "Be brave enough to call it early.”
― Chris Lear, Running with the Buffaloes: A Season Inside with Mark Wetmore, Adam Goucher, and the University of Colorado Men's Cross-Country Team